“The end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. 1 Peter 4:7
My mother had some gloomy days after she started living with us. Her depression was understandable; her losses were mounting up. Her parents went first, and then she lost her youngest son Dennis after decades of caring for him through a terminal disease. The neighborhood church in which Mom and Dad had served in myriad roles began a steady and painful decline in the 80’s and finally expired in the 90’s. Then Dad, then her older son Bob, and then her only sibling Lee passed away within a few years of each other. And through all of this a host of her contemporaries and friends were departing.
Most disorienting of all, though, were the very personal losses to her own sense of self. Her physical strength and dexterity began to deteriorate after two hip surgeries and some complications. The second surgery resulted in a bout of post-operative delirium and her ever- sharp mind did not completely return. For years she was quietly prideful—in her own humble way—about her determination, her physical stamina, her problem-solving-skills, an artistic flair manifested in various crafts, and her love of reading anything and everything. All of these things slipped away slowly enough that she was distressingly aware they were disappearing.
“What’s the point?” she complained to me more than once during the interminable hours of a long afternoon. “I can’t do anything anymore. There’s no sense to this. No one needs me. I can’t do anything. There’s no reason to live.” “I don’t know what to do.”
My mom’s plaintive wail came to my mind Monday morning after Pentecost as a few of us held some George Floyd-antiracism-themed posters for our biweekly silent peace vigil on a busy Waco corner. My placard, “Let’s Help Each Other Breathe,” was a plea to the world as well as to myself. Many passersby on their way to work or running errands resonated with our messages, honking, waving, giving a thumb’s up, or simply smiling. Maybe this was my own projection, but the affirmations seemed more rueful than enthusiastic. It felt as though a question hung heavy in the civic ether, sucking the oxygen out of the air. “Yes, but how do we go about stopping state-sponsored abuse, eradicating entrenched prejudice, and stemming pandemic spread? How do we heal our hearts? There’s no sense to this. How can we breath at all?” Our words felt breathless and feeble.
As I channeled my mother’s ennui, I thought about our Zoom celebration of Pentecost the day before. Since I was 18, for 50 years, I had been inspired by Luke’s description of the first church after Pentecost. “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts.” Acts 2:44-46 Over the decades this passage had become more dear to me and its implications clearer. To follow Jesus meant to build community, cross the chasms of separation, sit at the table of fellowship, and share mutually and generously with sisters and brothers as well as neighbors.
To follow Jesus meant to build community, cross the chasms of separation, sit at the table of fellowship, and share mutually and generously with sisters and brothers as well as neighbors.
The morning traffic at the corner of 17th and Waco Drive became a blur as the pandemic once again invaded and occupied my consciousness. So much has changed. We break bread and pass the cup only virtually. Nancy and I are most often sitting at our large dining table by ourselves. Our prayer gatherings are in Zoom rather than the upper room. I can’t smile for others with my mouth so I have to work harder to crinkle my eyes. When Jesse, my semi-homeless friend, asks for a ride, I tell him no. A few more honks struggled to lift up my spirit, but a second conquering force quickly trampled over it. Police brutality—only the tip of our world’s oppression of subjugated peoples—is more visible and palpable than ever. Decades of anti-racism training seem to have led to little change and no discernible progress, and we have to raise the question and begin again for the world, our communities, and our individual selves. What can we do, I thought?
The traffic was a blur as it continued to speed by. A few more half-hearted smiles, but really just a lot of numb-looking faces. Where, I wondered, can we find ourselves in the story of faith? That’s silly, I realized. Times have always been difficult. Following Jesus has never been a walk in the park. There must be plenty of places to find ourselves in the scriptural narrative. And then it struck me. We are in Acts 1, not Acts 2. The one command Jesus gave his disciples in Acts 1 was to wait, to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of their holy parent (v. 4). Jesus’s famous words to his group in verse 8, that they would be his witness in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth, was a promise not a commission. Their job, to wait and pray. After Jesus’ ascension, I am sure, it felt to the disciples that the end of all things was at hand. What were they to do? Apparently at this point there was not even any interest in going fishing. They simply returned to the upper room to wait. And to pray.
We’ve kept our Monday evening fellowship supper and prayer time for a sort-of extended household within HF, but we do it by Zoom. That Monday evening after the vigil as we fired up the computers and cell phones, I thought about the disciples. So what if we were post- rather than pre-Pentecost. So what if we were in the “supper Zoom” rather than the “upper room.” We ate, we debriefed and shared our own shock and dismay about current events as well as the blessings of the day, and then we prayed. I felt we were there with the disciples, or the disciples were with us as we waited for power. Two weeks later Bethany, one of our pastors, introduced a scripture which will guide us for a month in Hope Fellowship, 1 Peter 4:7-11. The first verse begins, “The end of all things is at hand....”, a sentiment shared not just by my mother, but also by myself and some others during this time, and also by Peter a number of years after Pentecost.
I am pleased to share that my mother in her last years accepted a role as the adopted grandmother of a generation of young Hope Fellowship children who would come, often with an ice cream cone to share, and help her work jigsaw puzzles and look at old photos. We talked a lot about universal ministry within Hope Fellowship, and she came to accept that regularly praying for every individual in the community was her job. I am certain that as Peter wrote or dictated verse seven, he remembered the feeling of lostness after Jesus’s ascension, the prayers that were lifted in the upper room, and the power of Pentecost that came soon thereafter. “The end of all things as at hand; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.” Amen.